A leading American evangelical minister—whom public figures long turned to for guidance in faith and politics—recounts his three conversions, from childhood Jewish roots to Christianity, from a pure faith to a highly politicized one, and from the religious right to the simplicity of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Rob Schenck’s extraordinary life has been at the center of the intersection between evangelical Christianity and modern politics. Attacked by partisans on both sides of the aisle, he has been called a "right-wing hate monger," the "ultimate D.C. power-broker," a "traitor" and "turncoat." Now, this influential spiritual adviser to America’s political class chronicles his controversial, sometimes troubling career in this revelatory and often shocking memoir. As a teenager in the 1970s, Schenck converted from Judaism to Christianity and found his calling in public ministry. In the 1980s, he, like his twin brother, became a radical activist leader of the anti-abortion movement. In the wake of his hero Ronald Reagan’s rise to the White House, Schenck became a leading figure in the religious right inside the Beltway. Emboldened by his authority and access to the highest reaches of government, Schenck was a zealous warrior, brazenly mixing ministry with Republican political activism—even confronting President Bill Clinton during a midnight Christmas Eve service at Washington’s National Cathedral. But in the past few years Schenck has undergone another conversion—his most meaningful transition yet. Increasingly troubled by the part he played in the corruption of religion by politics, this man of faith has returned to the purity of the gospel. Like Paul on the Road to Damascus, he had an epiphany: revisiting the lessons of love that Jesus imparted, Schenck realized he had strayed from his deepest convictions. Reaffirming his core spiritual beliefs, Schenck today works to liberate the evangelical community from the oppression of the narrowest interpretation of the gospel, and to urge Washington conservatives to move beyond partisan battles and forsake the politics of hate, fear, and violence. As a preacher, he continues to spread the word of the Lord with humility and a deep awareness of his past transgressions. In this moving and inspiring memoir, he reflects on his path to God, his unconscious abandonment of his principles, and his return to the convictions that guide him. Costly Grace is a fascinating and ultimately redemptive account of one man’s life in politics and faith.

A close look at the rhetoric of Operation Rescue. >

In 1998, one of only two doctors in Buffalo, New York, who performed abortions was shot dead by a radical antiabortion activist. The son of the surviving doctor now presents a gripping account of a family and a city caught in the crossfire of moral fervor and individual rights in the fierce battle over abortion.

The New York Times bestselling author offers an in-depth account of the life and death of a controversial doctor, the debate that sparked his assassination, and the place where two Americas collide On May 31, 2009, Scott Roeder walked into a Wichita church, drew a pistol, and shot Dr. George Tiller at point blank range. Tiller, who was the most public practitioner of late-term abortions in America, had been a lightning rod for controversy, regularly referred to in the conservative media as “Tiller, the Baby Killer.” Tiller’s death was a pivotal, public murder in a war that has been raging for decades. It’s a war of violently opposing ideologies, encompassing abortion, but also questions of privacy, sexuality, and religion. It’s being fought in our nation’s courtrooms, school and churches, on television sets, at our dinner tables, and in our bedrooms. And more and more, the key battlegrounds are in Kansas, once home to Brown vs. Board of Education and some of the bloodiest conflicts of the Civil War. This is a gripping look at a cold-blooded terrorist action, two men representing opposite ideological extremes, and the region where those violent forces clash.

In 1971 (two years before the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision to legalise abortion in the United States), Hoffman founded Choices, an abortion clinic in New York. As a medical provider, she pioneered 'patient power' encouraging women to participate in their own health care decisions. And going against even her own expectations for her life after fifty, she adopted a child and writes about her experience as a mother. Merle Hoffman has been on the front lines of the feminist movement, a fierce warrior in the battle for choice.

Targets of Hatred charts the development of the anti-abortion movement in North America. Beginning in the years preceding the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision that legalized abortion, the book examines the roles played by the Catholic Church, Fundamentalist Protestants, and Republican and Democratic parties, and assesses points of overlap and divergence. The voices of more than 190 providers in the United States and Canada--clinic owners, doctors, nurses, technicians, and their families--give readers an in-depth look at what it means to work in a field in which arson, bombings, harassment, and killing are routine. Filled with dramatic, eye-witness accounts of anti-abortion terrorism, the book demonstrates law enforcement's failure to stem the violence and is a call to arms for concerned individuals.

In Roe v. Wade, perhaps the most controversial United States Supreme Court decision, Norma McCorvey fought for and won the right to secure an abortion. Though she never had an abortion, under the pseudonym "Jane Roe," Norma reluctantly became the poster child for the pro-choice movement. Over the next two decades, Norma experienced the grief and despair of millions of women who chose to abort their babies; she witnessed the destruction of thousands of human lives in abortion clinics where she worked; and the "champion" of the pro-choice movement was soon being crushed by the weight of so much pain, so much death, and so many ill-considered "choices." Finally, she began to break. She found out that the real choice she had been burdened with was not about abortion but about eternal life. It was a choice that would shock the world and change Norma's life forever.

Forty years after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision legalizing abortion, Roe v. Wade continues to make headlines. After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate cuts through the myths and misunderstandings to present a clear-eyed account of cultural and political responses to the landmark 1973 ruling in the decade that followed. The grassroots activists who shaped the discussion after Roe, Mary Ziegler shows, were far more fluid and diverse than the partisans dominating the debate today. In the early years after the decision, advocates on either side of the abortion battle sought common ground on issues from pregnancy discrimination to fetal research. Drawing on archives and more than 100 interviews with key participants, Ziegler’s revelations complicate the view that abortion rights proponents were insensitive to larger questions of racial and class injustice, and expose as caricature the idea that abortion opponents were inherently antifeminist. But over time, “pro-abortion” and “anti-abortion” positions hardened into “pro-choice” and “pro-life” categories in response to political pressures and compromises. This increasingly contentious back-and-forth produced the interpretation now taken for granted—that Roe was primarily a ruling on a woman’s right to choose. Peering beneath the surface of social-movement struggles in the 1970s, After Roe reveals how actors on the left and the right have today made Roe a symbol for a spectrum of fervently held political beliefs.